March 5th - Pete The Cat

We're Marching into March!

Here's our song of the month:

 At the beginning of the week we read the
book "Pete the Cat" and even got to watch the movie!

Pete the Cat is a rhythmic, catchy book you'll love reading with your kids! It provides some great teaching opportunities.

After reading the book and watching the movie, we sequenced and illustrated our own "Pete the Cat" books.

 After reading our books all week, on Thursday we watched the movie again, and followed along in our own books.  We loved connecting the text with fun visuals and catchy music.

 We reviewed the letter name and sound of "Ii".

With each vowel added, it opens the door to so many more words we can phonetically read.

This week we made our own letter books.

Using sight words we already know, we chose pictures with words beginning with the "i" sound and composed our "Ii Book"

What we can write we can read, and what we can read, we can write.

Since we wrote our own books this week, reading to each other was extra fun!

We've been working on "CVC" words.  (consonant, vowel, consonant)

It's important to hear the individual sounds that make each word.  What may seem simple to us - hearing individual sounds - is a more difficult concept for young readers.  This is why we start with a big picture, something they can easily grasp, and work our way to smaller details.  We began with identifying the number of words in a sentence, then moved to the number of syllables in a word, and now have worked our way to individual sounds in a word.  This step by step process helps the students form a sound understanding of the composition of texts, words, and sounds.   

We also play a game called "Troll Talk".  Trolls occasionally visit our preschool and leave items in a bag. I tell them what's in the bag using "Troll Talk" - dividing the words first by syllables, then once that was mastered, dividing the words into individual sounds.  For example, the troll may have left a "ba-na-na".  And the advanced level, the troll left a "h-a-t". Again, this seems so simple to decode, but for young readers it isn't an easy task. They must train their ears to hear these individual sounds and successfully blend them together to form words.

A favorite activity for us lately is having a "Dance Party".

We love having fun with our friends!